Feisty Colonists come to life in Naked Quaker’

Sunday

Jul 29, 2007 at 10:41 AM

Jennifer Fealsjfeals@seacoastonline.com

First as a trial lawyer and now as a historical researcher, writer and public speaker, Diane Rapaport knows that court records can be stranger than fiction and just as entertaining, sometimes even more so.“The Naked Quaker: True Crimes and Controversies from the Courts of Colonial New England,” Rapaport’s second book, is a collection of true stories about Colonial court cases. The book will be released this October.Containing chapters with titles including “Witches and Wild Women,” “Coupling,” “Tavern Tales,” “Slaves and Servants” and “Offshore Antics,” Rapaport said the events challenge perceptions.“I think most of these stories could end up surprising to readers who imagine Puritan New England was some drab, dull place where people sat around in church and never had fun ... or sex,” she said. “I think people will be surprised by how feisty the early Colonists were.” The book’s title story involves a 17th century Quaker woman from Hampton, Lydia Wardell, one of New England’s early Quakers, who showed her contempt for Puritan authorities by taking her clothes off during church services.“Everyone, regardless of their beliefs, was expected to go to regular Sunday church services and could be fined and otherwise punished if they didn’t,” Rapaport said. “This woman and her husband had been prosecuted for not attending and she decided if she was going to be forced to go to church, she was going to make a statement. She dropped her clothes, according to the court records, which weren’t real specific, but it got attention and she was punished for that.”While Smuttynose Island at the Isles of Shoals is no longer inhabited, Rapaport’s story “Smuttynose Sailors and Sinners” shows that in the 17th century, it was a “wild, wild place.”“It was a place where mostly fishermen and pirates tended to congregate and it was known for violence and hard drinking,” she said. “The Naked Quaker” is meticulously researched, Rapaport said, but is written in a colorful style that brings history to life. “One of my goals is to help people find out that human nature hasn’t changed all that much over the past 350 years. Even though they used different words back then, the Puritan days were not dry at all, the way most people think. I’ve really just tried to bring these people to life because they were really interesting, unruly, irreverent people.”Rapaport, from Lexington, Mass., is a former trial lawyer and frequent public speaker who began by publishing her research in a number of magazines such as New England Ancestors, The Highlander and History Scotland. Rapaport said her career path was a long time in the making. “I studied Colonial America and got a history degree in college,” she said. “History was always my first love. But I never looked at court records much until I went into law school.”Her interest in the records came about 10 years ago when Rapaport was reading a history book about her own town and came across an intriguing paragraph on one of the earliest settlers — a Scottish prisoner of war who was shipped to the colonies in the mid-1600s with hundreds of others and were sold as slaves.“I had never heard about this when I was a history major and found it so interesting that I started digging a little more. I didn’t find too much in history books or genealogy books, so I decided to take a look at court records. I found records that had just been overlooked for hundreds of years,” she said. “I became so interested in this that I became kind of obsessed with reading Colonial court cases. There is just a treasure-trove of stuff about forgotten people.” Rapaport’s first book, “New England Court Records,” a research book on court records from the 17th to 21st centuries, recently won the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Awards for excellence in independent publishing, the Independent Book Publishers Association awards for “Best History Book” and “Best Reference Book,” and it was a finalist for “Best New Voice In Nonfiction.” In May, the book received the 2007 Literary Award for Best Genealogical Resource from the Connecticut Society of Genealogists.Rapaport said she is having a lot of fun as a full-time writer and public speaker. “I really enjoy telling these stories, too. That’s been the most fun for me of all — doing this historical story telling, giving talks all over New England. People seem to really be surprised at these stories and to really enjoy them.”

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